You'll never see your garden the same way again after seeing the Maria Sibylla Merian & Daughters exhibit at The Getty in Los Angeles.  This exhibit runs through August 31st, so make an appointment with yourself this summer to check it out. 

Oh yes, it's FRIDA...at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.  I'll be there next month and I'll be thinking of you Kelly! 

[Nurturing Tomorrow :: APAK] 

...and speaking of Giant Robot, you just missed their latest NYC gallery show featuring works by the husband and wife creative team APAK, but you can purchase their work on Etsy.

And don't despair!  Jack Long's show at Giant Robot Los Angeles is opening this weekend, Saturday, June 21st:

[Opened :: Jack Long] 

Looking for something up north?  Yellena James' show also opens this Saturday at Giant Robot San Francisco:

[Someday :: Yellena James] 

Artist Jonathan Blum will be at Jenny Bec's in Santa Monica tomorrow - Saturday, June 7 from 11am - -6pm, with monoprint demonstrations at 11am and 3:30pm.  I saw his creations when I was there earlier this week and they are fabulous!  This would be a great event for kids too.

Michael Mew has a new show up at Deborah Page Gallery in Santa Monica, and you can meet him tonight at their opening reception from 6-9pm.  I saw some of his new creations this week and as always, I love them. 

The UCLA Hannah Carter Japanese Garden looks like an oasis in the middle of crazy Los Angeles.  Even a visit to their website makes you want to put on a pot of green tea, light a candle and just listen to the wind.

"Trees are the earth's endless effort to speak to the listening heaven."  Rabindranath Tagore 

Get ready to gorge on popcorn and let the film geek in you run wild - the LA Film Fest is almost here:

"The Los Angeles Film Festival, held annually for ten days in June, showcases the best of American and international independent cinema. With an expected attendance of over 100,000, the festival screens over 175 narrative features, documentaries, shorts, and music videos. Now in its fourteenth year, the festival has grown into a world-class event, uniting new filmmakers with critics, scholars, film masters, and the movie-loving public."  -LAFF website 

The Architecture & Design Museum of Los Angeles has a number of cool exhibits going on right now.  This is definitely on my list of upcoming field trips!  "After The Flood- A Movement Performance Piece Based On The Writings Of Tennessee Williams And Andrei Codescu" on June 22 looks especially intriguing. 

From the ISM website:

"ISM: gallery presents a playful take on the journey from student to professional artist. A group of student artists from a Community College, a State School and a Private University will exhibit their work in an environment that provides anonymity from the school they attend, showing amongst their contemporaries in a true celebration of the creative impulse.
 
During the opening reception, visitors to the ISM: gallery will get the opportunity to vote for the artist they feel is "Best In Show". The winner will be revealed on our website where they will be celebrated for their talent as an artist and as a student, not of any one school but of art itself."

Saturday May 31st // 7:00 - 10:00 p.m.

Visit the ISM Community website for more details and to see what other fun projects ISM is up to! 

Superheroes: Fashion and Fantasy is now exhibiting at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC through September 1, 2008:

"The symbolic and metaphorical associations between fashion and the superhero are explored in this compelling exhibition. Featuring movie costumes, avant-garde haute couture, and high-performance sportswear, it reveals how the superhero serves as the ultimate metaphor for fashion and its ability to empower and transform the human body. Objects are organized thematically around particular superheroes, whose movie costumes and superpowers are catalysts for the discussion of key concepts of superheroism and their expression in fashion."  -MMA Website

Read an article about the exhibit here! 

Over Rainbows and Down Rabbit Holes: The Art of Children's Books is now on display at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art through June 15, 2008:

"This magical presentation features approximately 70 works of art created specifically for children’s books.  These original works, seen as independent creations while connecting with their literary context, inspire the imagination and celebrate the creativity of making picture books for readers of all ages."  -SBMA Website 

I am so excited to see Between Heaven and Earth:  The Architecture of John Lautner this summer at the UCLA Hammer Museum.  The exhibit will run from July 13 through October 12, 2008.

“Lautner’s dwellings took on dramatically new and varied shapes, as he moved toward the central theme of his career -- how to use architecture to sublimate the domestic, and to domesticate the sublime.  As we follow him from his early work with Frank Lloyd Wright to the emergence of his own practice in the 1940s in rapidly expanding, automobile-based Los Angeles, we see how he responded to a changing society and the natural environment by developing an extraordinarily sensuous, thoughtful and innovative architecture, poised between feeling and reason, stillness and motion, vista and shelter.”  -Nicholas Olsberg, curator

[Photo by Ronald & Charlotte Williams]

I Madonnari is happening this weekend in Santa Barbara.  Don't miss it! 

 The Denver Art Museum is now in the midst of its Take Two: Film & Its Inspirations series.  Art + film = Inspiration Squared.

This just might have to be on my itinerary when I go to San Diego next month.  Georgia O'Keefe and hte Women of Stieglitz Circle opens May 24 at the San Diego Museum of Art. 

No really, what is The Moth?

"The Moth, a not-for-profit storytelling organization, was founded in New York in 1997 by poet and novelist George Dawes Green, who wanted to recreate in New York the feeling of sultry summer evenings on his native St. Simon's Island, Georgia, where he and a small circle of friends would gather to spin spellbinding tales on his friend Wanda's porch. After moving to New York, George missed the sense of connection he had felt sharing stories with his friends back home, and he decided to invite a few friends over to his New York apartment to tell and hear stories. Thus the first "Moth" evening took place in his living room. Word of these captivating story nights quickly spread, and The Moth moved to bigger venues in New York. Today, The Moth conducts six ongoing programs and has brought more than 2,000 live stories to over 60,000 audience members."  -The Moth Website 

The Moth StorySLAM:  Weddings is tonight in Los Angeles!  

"Hot on the heels of last month's supersized West Coast GrandSLAM, the Moth returns to its more intimate monthly rhythm with the almost too cute theme of weddings, honoring the kickoff of the springtime matrimonial season. Between obligatory emotional and financial meltdowns, overzealous relatives and domineering planners, wardrobe malfunctions, obsessive exes, seating-chart gaffes, drunken mishaps on the dance floor, inappropriate toasts, honeymoon horrors, cold feet, and hot buffets, weddings are a tailor-made subject for an amateur storytelling contest, judged by an audience plied with cocktail specials."  – Shana Nys Dambrot

My friend Keri Smith is speaking at this year's ICON5 Illustration Conference in New York City July 2-5, 2008.  Visit the ICON5 website for information on the schedule, speakers and more.  Registration is now open!!

"ICON5 will be held in New York City at the historic Roosevelt Hotel in midtown Manhattan. This year's theme, The Big Picture, is more than a slogan, it is the perspective through which we see our future – a future of limitless possibilities for illustrators as thinkers, story tellers and providers of creative content. The conference promises to examine and discuss the current creative and economic forces that our industry faces today.

The ICON continues to gather the industry's best and brightest talent to present and talk about their work, their business, their lives, and their passion for illustration. Our conferences have also grown to include inspiring, informative and topical pre-conference tours and workshops. ICON5 is going a step further with ambitious attendance goals, increased global involvement and more pre-conference events to make the ICON5 experience a must-do for 2008."  -ICON5 website

Anahata Katkin is leading a creative retreat in Bali next year and it looks DIVINE!  Details are here. 

Yes, you read that right - it is a Grilled Cheese Invitational!  This Saturday, April 19 in Los Angeles, details here.  I think I know what I'm having for lunch today... 

P.S.  Have you seen The Official Grilled Cheese Blog?